


From Sea to Shining Sea

by teddybearandlily



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types, Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: District 13, District 4, Gen, Panem, The Capitol
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-02
Updated: 2018-06-02
Packaged: 2019-05-17 10:09:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,413
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14830302
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/teddybearandlily/pseuds/teddybearandlily
Summary: A fisherman from District 4 went out in his boat one night, and never came back.The world outside Panem wonders what they can do about the isolationist, reclusive and repressive kingdom. They are very interested in what the lost Panem citizen has to say about his homeland.





	From Sea to Shining Sea

**Author's Note:**

> An AU (I suppose) where Panem isn't the sole polity in its world.

He left in his boat one day and never came back. Swept away on the rolling seas, the high waves and foamy oscillations, under darkened skies. 

They waited for him on the docks of the city. They wept for him. Their tears rolled into the water below, salt rising up in towers of steam as the sky wept too, as they lit lanterns and held them into the darkness. Men braved the storm themselves in their little boats, tossed and turned on the racing sea, but all were forced to turn back before they were even out of the harbour, lashed against the harbour wall mercilessly. They re-joined the silent vigil, dripping and hopeless. 

Children darted between the legs of the crowd, half-excited at the commotion and half-nervous for it was clear even to the youngest that something terrible had happened. The oldest, some of whom remembered previous vigils and knew they would participate again, stood as still and proud as their parents against the waves, knowing it could have been their father who had walked out of the door one dark evening and been lost to the sea. Who had inspired such a reception that he would never return to see. 

In private homes when it got too wet and cold to stand outside, when the baby needed feeding and clothes washing and potatoes peeled, wives clung to husbands, knowing they had to soon relinquish them to the waves as sure as the tides changed if they were to be able to feed their children.

A collection was started for the young wife, soon to be officially another widow, and for the baby lying in the crib back at the tumbledown cottage, crying and crying, his distress a beacon call that went unanswered. The Mayor came down to make a solemn speech like he always did. It never varied. It was identical to all the speeches he had made for previous drownings at sea, but he made sure to get the man’s name right. He tossed a gold coin into the collection from his own pocket. He was linked to his people in some customs that could never be formalised or codified, despite all the Capitol’s standardisation and rationalisation. 

Mags was too old to bear vigil any longer, although for years she had stood at the prow of the harbour, on the spike that jutted out on an outcrop of rocks, scanning the horizon, the first sight any returning traveller would see. 

Some had fallen into her welcoming arms, but they were lucky and few. 

Mags couldn’t stand anymore facing the sea spray and whistling wind. Instead she invited the wife to her spacious and warm home, and she held the baby and rocked him to sleep, and offered him a home in the Camp when he got older, an act equivalent to saving his life for a son without a father and therefore without a fishing boat was doomed to a life of drudgery and servitude as the lowest rank on the industrial fishing ships.

They prayed, and they called, and they cried, and they searched, and they hoped.

It didn’t matter. He never came back.

Hope turned to fear turned to resignation. Within days the candles were lowered and the shutters opened. No graves were ever dug for their fallen at sea. No funerals were ever held. 

Instead, the sea did it all: it was the sea that caressed their loved and lost ones, that sang them away on the wisp of a wave and carried them beyond. 

It wasn’t an uncommon occurrence, for a man to go out and be buried at sea. In the old days three generations of men were often lost at once because they were family boats. All gone in one single terrible night, the youngest perhaps on their first ever voyage. 

But that had become less common ever since the Capitol had banned nighttime sailing and sailing whenever the Meteorology Tubes were above twelve. 

The Capitol had been pleased with the latest statistics sent by the mayor and their bureaucrats. Catch was up by 54% and accidents down by 12%, the former of course much more important than the latter although accidents were never good for business. Most of the time they weren’t accidents, but the avoidable and inevitable result of the Capitol’s inflexible targets. To meet them, shortcuts had to be taken and safety measures disregarded. The regulations the Capitol had written were lax and minimal, but even they couldn’t be adhered to. If District 4 didn’t meet its fish quota, the bread rations stopped. A child can’t live on fish alone.

In the most notable case of an accident at sea being bad for business, twenty years prior, a great feast was being put on for the Capitolites to celebrate the first anniversary of victory in the war. It required mounds and heapings of fish. Four was pushed to the brink of its productive capabilities, every man and woman mobilised, day and night, to catch the required fish.  
There were already grumblings because the Capitol overseers were liberal with their whip. They whipped hungry and malnourished men, women and children who slipped one single fish of the many thousands they had caught into their pocket for later. Theft from the Capitol was a capital offence and the Capitol considered itself lenient not shooting on the spot anyone found taking fish. 

The overseers, stuck in the difficult position of having impossible to fill quotas from the Capitol and the inarguable fact that every other overseer was somehow managing to fulfil their quota, inevitably and rationally were pushed to take ever more violent and desperate measures to increase production, even if they didn’t agree with them, even if they didn’t want to take them.

One fifteen-year-old boy was worked so hard he fell off his boat, exhausted and surprised, into the cold unforgiving ocean below. No rescue attempt was made because everyone knew he was gone, but the fishermen on his boat sailed back immediately in cold fury and mutiny, despite the overseer shouting at them to continue fishing. The story spread and soon the central logistical point stood silent and empty, when it should have been bustling and raucous because the total quota for the commemoration was only just over halfway filled.

The initial negligence and culpability of the Capitol was not surprising and by itself didn’t explain the depths of the feeling towards the Capitol. Deaths at sea directly and indirectly due to the Capitol had happened before without causing widespread dissent and they would happen again. But what stoked the flickering flame into a fire of discontent and rebellion was the Capitol’s response to the accident. They didn’t apologise. They didn’t provide remedial measures. They didn’t make an effort to punish the overseer, not even with a token reprimand that wasn’t unprecedented. There wasn’t an understanding of the people’s grievances, not even simple recognition of it. 

They were told to shut up and get on with their work. Four refused.

The boats stayed motionless on their moorings. Children stared from doorways as Peacekeepers marched down the street, in formation, a show of strength. Four starved and were starved into submission.

In the Capitol, fish prices increased so much it had long lasting effects on their cuisine. It was only a year after the war had ended: Capitol citizens were used to enduring privations and rations. Instead of Four’s cod, haddock and salmon, they had to make do with Six’s inferior trout and mackerel.

One young housewife, coolly enterprising, had written a recipe book popularising these two readily available fish, a fish previously seen as the lower classes food by the snooty Capitol elite. The recipes were ones she had developed during the war when there were fihs shortages of equal severity. Her young son would grow up rich and would eventually use his mother’s connections to become the youngest Gamemaker in history, although she would come to regret this.

When the Capitol was reorganising District 4 the Meteorologists had wanted to ban sailing when the tube was above seven, but the Capitol’s diplomats in Four, better versed in the District’s traditions and more understanding of what would be tolerated and what would not be, had argued against this. 

The fishermen would rebel against that ordinance, passively if nothing else, claiming a bad catch while the black market would suddenly be mysteriously teeming with fish. If they couldn’t fish when the tube was above seven they would be hard pressed to catch enough fish to sell to the Capitol, let alone for their families. 

In the past, the Capitol would probably have just banned it anyway and turned a blind eye when people had to break it to survive. But that kind of old implicit understanding was the very target of the re-organisation. They wanted laws people actually followed, not the in-between haziness that had previously existed, where one could be sure of the Capitol’s mercy and understanding in some circumstances and not others, when authority was less clear and overlapping and old traditional rules co-existed with the Capitol’s rigid new ones. From now on, there would be one authority and it would be the Capitol’s in the Capitol. Everything else would be abolished. The local bureaucrats and distant Peacekeepers in the districts didn’t rule. They merely carried out the Capitol’s rule.

So the Capitol decided to disregard the meteorologist’s advice to ban sailing. Less likely to get a riot that way. Everyone took that very seriously. 

After the riot of 15, when twelve fishermen had died on land, harpooned like seals and dripping dark red blood into the earth, it was imperative to be cautious. 

The Ambassador had gone down in that one too, sent to Twelve in disgrace. The diplomats didn’t want that to happen to them. Let the fishermen of Four die instead! If they wanted to kill themselves by going out in storms – to catch the fish the Capitol insisted upon, after all – let them.

The Ambassador’s wife had been so bored in Twelve, with no society parties or balls to go to, she had begun fucking around with the head Peacekeeper. The Ambassador had lost her in Twelve. 

To protect his honour, the wife and the Peacekeeper had to be dragged naked through the streets, humiliated and shamed, the people of Twelve watching grim faced from their door ways. It was said the Ambassador’s mouth was set in a sad line while he nudged at them with the gun. 

And the children! Who would want to marry them, knowing they’d marry into a line of whores? The daughters would be alright; there were men even for the lowest of women. The sons might take a local wife, if they were lucky. That, for the children of Major Huckenbee, who had graduated first in his class out of the University, who had attended Snow’s wedding.

No. Nobody wanted a riot in Four.

The Capitol did ban fishing in stormy weather when the Tube was above twelve, seen as grossly inadequate by the Meteorologists. Few fishermen would dare venture out into these seas even if they were allowed to. At the same time the Capitol increased the quota to pay for the meteorologists’ fancy equipment that was supposedly keeping Four safe. 

The Capitol meteorologists had bolted strange steel gray instruments half a metre out into the sea. No-one in Four really liked them, despite their purpose to warn them of storms and unnatural murmurings within the earth that could cause the sea to rise. 

Most in Four felt the sea should be wild and unchained. It hurt them to see it controlled and monitored – just like them.

They said he went out that night to look at the moonlight. That’s what his widow sobbed to anyone who tactfully asked, anyway. He wasn’t supposed to have gone out in his boat; she just couldn’t understand it. He had been on the seas all his life, he knew what a navigable storm looked like, knew when to leave the sea alone to broil and rumble like everyone in Four. 

The Capitol refused to pay compensation for the boat because he had disobeyed their law. The whole collection went to paying his debts to the man who owned the boat. 

His wife was left with only memories. And the screaming, damp baby.

 

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

 

He found them on the last day. Or perhaps they found him. He didn’t know how many days it had been since he had left the familiar slipway, the light blue water of his home. 

He didn’t know how many days he had been floating, the wide sea below him, losing track of the horizon dizzily.

The water carried him, and he had to trust it to carry him to safety. 

How many days he had contemplated letting himself sink into madness, considered diving into the sea and never coming back up. Swallowing the salty water and letting his limbs sink heavy to the bottom. Every child in Four knew this trick, how to sink in even the most buoyant of seas. They all competed with one another to see who could stay down the longest, who could hold their breath until they won. 

He heard screaming at night sometimes, the sounds of invisible creatures out there somewhere, and mouthed his name. 

Oh, Theo. 

He would never see his child again. Theo would grow up without a father to take him out to sea and teach him to swim, to fish, how to read the signs in the clouds and in the waves. Guide him into the harbour at the end of every trip. He would be lost on both land and water.

He never did drown himself. He clung onto life like a boat clings to the harbour wall in the strongest storm.

On the last day he scraped up on the sand with a suddenness and harshness that surprised him, after the many long days of gentle, curving lightness, the rocking motion of the waves.

He lay there, not understanding what had happened after so many days at motion. 

Why was he not moving? Why was he still? 

The sky spun above him, and he felt dizzy. He fell onto his knees and then onto his side. He closed his eyes, the sand damp under him, and dreamed of his son.

They found him in the morning. They came up to him, with a brisk and rough curiosity that reminded him of the waves. They shook him, hesitant, and shrank back when he started up, coughing and coughing. They gave him water and some hard substance that he was unfamiliar was but it was sweet and tasted good. They stayed silent as he ate.

It was clear they weren’t Peacekeepers. They were wearing colourful, loose clothing and had a friendly dog with them, that jumped up and down and didn’t try to bite him. Their slightly nervous but friendly manner was disorienting. 

His head was still spinning and the water he had drunk made him feel queasy so he just laid there and waited for something to happen.

When the Peacekeepers turned up, he accepted his fate. He had gone out after curfew, in a terrible storm. He had sailed away in a boat that didn’t belong to him. Worst of all, he had come so far he couldn’t possibly deny it was an escape attempt, even though it wasn’t. He would beg for clemency for his wife and son, but as for his own life, he knew it was over.

The interrogation room was white. It made the dirt stand out, and all he could concentrate on was the dark spots on the wall, the scuff marks on the floor. The spots of red splattered across the white washed wall.

The interrogator talked slowly, like he was an idiot. 

“And how many districts are there, again, Awen?” 

Making a mark on his paper even though Awen had told them this very piece of information already at least three times. He couldn’t understand who these people were that they didn’t know such simple facts. Even the smallest children knew how many Districts there were.

They kept asking him the same question again and again, and he couldn’t tell whether he was just incomprehensible, slurring through swollen sunburnt lips, or if they just didn’t believe him and were trying to catch him in his lie, like his father used to do to him when he swore blind through blue lips that he hadn’t been scrumping billberries from their neighbour. 

“Twelve. Well –” He stopped. 

The interrogator leaned forward, keen eyed. “Well what?”

“There are – there used to be thirteen.”

“Thirteen districts?”

“Yes. District Thirteen, during the rebellion, they were destroyed. That was almost thirty years ago.”

And now he’s confusing them. He never should have mentioned Thirteen. If they didn’t even know the Twelve Districts, they surely wouldn’t care about the one that was destroyed all those years ago...

The interrogator looked behind Awen to someone he couldn’t see. Said something in their funny accent. Awen just wanted to sleep. He was just a fisherman from Four and clearly, not even a very competent seaman at that.

“You’re sure about that? There are Twelve districts, but there used to be Thirteen?”

“Yes.” 

There was a sudden flurry of activity. More men came in, older men, white bearded and bespectacled, distinguished looking. They didn’t make notes, but leant forward, and he noticed their hands knotting nervously as they looked at him, the one betrayer of their calm and confident demeanour. 

There was a shiver of anticipation in the air, electric, and it woke him up. 

They made Awen recount the sad story of Thirteen’s demise, how it was the beating heart of the Rebellion and when Thirteen died the Rebellion died too. How the nuclear warheads were no match for the Capitol, how they couldn’t save the other Districts in the end; couldn’t even save themselves. 

How the Capitol destroyed Thirteen until all that was left was smoking rubble. 

Awen supposed he was a little biased in his story telling. He was from Four. They stood tall and proud. They fought in the Uprising, and they fought hard. 

The Capitol still didn’t trust them, all this time later, despite the Camp. The Capitol delighted in tearing down their winning Tributes after they win. God only knew how Mags was still standing.

They ignored him after a while. The buzz of movement was still there if slightly more subdued. People moved around busily, shouting to each other over the din. 

He tried to stop someone to ask what’s going on but they brushed him off, scurrying away. He sank onto the seat and dozed.

When he woke up, and if anything the activity in the room was more frantic Awen was desperate when he asked, “What is going on?”

“What you said. Thirteen.” The clerk sitting by his side, typing something out, seemed to think this was an adequate answer.

“What? What about Thirteen?”

The clerk didn’t even lift his head to look at him. “They haven’t been destroyed,” he proclaimed. 

“Wha – what?”

Thirteen, not destroyed! 

Impossible. 

From what he had heard and what he believed, he knew Thirteen would never sit quiet and silent. 

His father remembered them well. He remembered his old Comrades. He had told Awen as a boy upon his knee of how they were so fearless and so proud. 

Thirteen would never acquiesce to the Capitol, they would never give in. They would never leave the Districts in bondage and subjugation, never leave them to be slaves. 

They would prefer to fight to the end, to the death. 

They did. 

And: Four would never let their brave, stubborn children become willing killers. 

The clerk explains a little more. “There’s a signal, once every year, just once. I suppose it takes too much resources for any more than that. It’s the same, every year. Just one word. We always thought it was some renegade with a working transmitter. But a renegade District. I could never imagine.” 

The clerk lost his professionalism for just a second, shaking his head in disbelief. 

“And the signal?”

But the clerk has stopped listening to him, distracted by an incoming message.

Another clerk takes pity on Awen. 

“Help.”

It sends a shiver through him. The very word scatters fire through ice. He feels cold all of a sudden, despite the warm breeze.

Help.


End file.
